Patient Zero
by Cosmic Wind
Summary: It wasn't aliens they hid at Area 51…


Cliwe Brenning sat in the living partition of his mobile home, listening to the sandstorm raging outside of his confined compartment, while staring at the text he was scrolling through on his laptop; proof reading it one more time, before he was going to send it off to the paper. The Interview with Dr. Alison Sinclair, expert on means for biological warfare. According to her the biological agents used in biological weapons could often be manufactured quickly and easily. The primary difficulty was not the production of the biological agent but the delivery system in an effective form to a vulnerable target. According to her, any idiot could make anthrax, there were even recipes found on the net.

So then why all this secrecy? What had they been hiding in the infamous Area 51 at Groom Lake alias Homey Airport for so many years while urban myths and legends had been flourishing like weed in the society? Was it a crashed alien space ship complete with bodies of extraterrestrials? Little gray beings with huge and slanted black eyes? Or was it something entirely different? Something so horrible and awful that it could not be presented to the world population because it would create mass hysteria?

Well, Cliwe Brenning had made it his mission to find out. To uncover this almost 75 years old secret that was possibly hiding in that military base. He intended to reveal to the world what was there, since he was convinced that the world needed to know, deserved to know as a matter of fact. There could be nothing so secret or terrifying enough to justify this almost absurd secrecy. And tonight he was going in. He had prepared for this for years and years, it had been far from easy, and it had cost him, and his employer a fortune, but in the end he was looking at success – or at least a mean to success.

But first he was sending off his article, ending it with a clause – that he might not be coming back.

Dr Sinclair had said it was all about biological warfare and that they kept special viruses there, viruses that could kill a large proportion of the human population if any of them got out. And that was the only reason for keeping a major place of the base closed and beyond access for anyone with a special clearance classification. With marred brows, Charles was reading her words on the screen:

_Our experts have developed a robust surveillance system which is vital to human clinicians and veterinarians who may now identify a bio-weapon attack early in the course of an epidemic, permitting the prophylaxis of the disease in the vast majority of people, and/or animals, exposed but not yet ill. The enemy can kill a lot of people if they're all close together in a confined space, but if the aim is to try to take hundreds of thousands of people, it'll take quite some time, and you might have to use several points of exposure in different locations._

_The goal of bio-defense is to integrate the sustained efforts of national and homeland security, medical, public health, intelligence, and law enforcement communities. Health care providers and public health officers are the first lines of defense. Private, local, and state capabilities are being augmented by and coordinated with federal assets, to provide layered defenses against biological weapons attacks._

_The threats of bio-warfare agents and bio-terrorism have led to the development of specific field tools able to perform on-the-spot analysis and identification of encountered suspect materials. One such technology is being developed by researchers right here at the institute. It goes by the working name of Lazarus and can detect known biological agents in about 20 minutes and immediately begin to formulate a vaccine to counteract the virus._

So far so good, Dr Sinclair didn't give a dime for the common Joe and Jane's talks about aliens and space ships; she had shrugged that off with Santa, Atlantis and intelligent design. And she had more or less laughed when Brenning had presented his model 1A questions about the assumed aliens and saucers, claiming she had heard it all before enough time to feel quite over it by now. However, Brenning wasn't that easily discouraged. On the contrary, Dr Sinclair's dismissively attitude had given him a certain feel that they were indeed hiding something there on the base. Something other than viral strains. Something larger. And he intended to find out what that was.

To gain this, Brenning had emptied all his assets, bet everything upon this, that it would become a success story, the scoop of his life, the Publisher Price. A star in the hall of fame of journalism, way up there with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein the Watergate reporters. The man who revealed the secret of the Area 51, that was going to be him, Cliwe Brenning.

He remembered his encounter with Gabriel Tonoque, the Roswell blue collar worker with gambling problems who had sold a few secrets including his own ID card to Brenning in return for an amount of money which would make it possible for him to settle his debt. Brenning hoped that he would do so as well also, instead of using the money all over again by the gambling tables of Vegas and end up with even more debts. However that was hardly Brenning's problem, he had needed a way in to the base, and into the secluded areas, and Tonoque had provided him with that.

"You have no idea how many of those badges which are getting lost," Tonoque had told Brenning upon asking. "I'll only tell I've been robbed or pickpocketed or something and the bosses will let it be. They don't have time to dig deeper into the problem with a lost card."

Then there was the deeper layer, the ones beyond Tonoque's access. To get some help with that he had collected another debt – gratitude from Vince Taylor, an old friend from the colleague era, a geek who had ended up as one of the uber-wizards of Silicon Valley. Taylor had been working on the microchip of Tonoque's badge, to give Brenning the highest clearance there was.

Hitting **SEND**, Brenning watched his document with the transcribed interview being encrypted and then sent off in the cyberspace, and milliseconds later, did he receive the confirmation that it had been received by the common hub at the editorial office of his work place. After that he stood and donned the clothes needed for his excursion.

The sentries by the side entrance didn't look twice at the garbage truck as it made it up to the check point. They had seen it plenty enough times. OK, it was a new guy driving it, a white guy this time, but he looked even more vapid than that African fatto with the dreads. Like a Clark Kent who would never become Superman, and his face was forgotten as soon as the yellow and black vehicle was waved through the gates. Tuesday morning garbage collect, it didn't get more exciting at this very entrance, so the sentries went back to discuss the NFL.

The reporter stopped the truck, left it running, he now had 30 minutes before he was supposed to be back at the vehicle again. He slipped down on the floor and changed clothes and shoes into the expected uniform, another thing borrowed by Gabriel Tonoque and finally he attached the faked ID-bag, modelled on Tonoque's, to his chest. After that Brenning made a quick check that the coast was clear before slipping out of the truck and easily jumping down on the tarmac. He breathed out and concentrated upon walking slowly, almost lethargic over to the special gray building which was off limit for the majority of people, even among those working here.

The faked ID-badge wouldn't have worked there if it hadn't been for Vince Taylor's tinkering with the micro-chip attached to it, but a Brenning held it over the card reader to the entrance door, and tapped in the code, it took only a blink of an eye before the small led switched to green, a click was heard in the door as it unlocked, and Brenning was admitted inside.

Following that he slipped through doors and doors, descended stairs and leaving windows and daylight behind before finally walking down another narrow corridor towards a check point with a disinterested guard who didn't look twice since the metal detector which Brenning passed didn't squeal. Then he was descending a narrow and steep steel staircase, making it down into the basement. Here it became dusky, since several of the overhead light-tubes were broken. The only thing heard was the white noise of the air condition, and the still was almost unnervingly. Was there no one here at all? Come to think of it, the only one the reporter had met in this entire building had been that guard by the metal detector, and he seemed to be posed there more for show than for some real purpose.

He reached one final set of doors. An airlock, with a biohazard sign painted in fluorescent red upon it and with a badge reader sitting beside the door, just as his informer had told him. Brenning glanced over at the camera above before slid the ID badge off himself, removed his right shoe and brought out a small sheet of tin-foil which he wrapped carefully around the ID badge, before he tucked that one in his trouser pocket. The second item he brought out was a special one, the size of a camera memory card, another gift of his geek friend. Using that with the memorized six digit code, Brenning was able to open the airlock door.

He was let into a small compartment and there he waited while the air was recycled. For a while he got claustrophobic, even though he knew that the process would take no longer than six minutes. But he couldn't help the unnerving fear that he would be stuck in this place forever, slowly either suffocating or starving to death. But after the stated six minutes there was a 'click' at the other end and the next door began slowly to slide open.

Brenning hadn't really known what to expect, but it was certainly not this.

Instead of the utilitarian warehouse space he had expected, he found himself in an elegant foyer with a thick carpet and cream white walls holding priceless artworks. The set-up reminded him of a first class hotel from bygone days. Thick draperies were pulled to the side on each side of him as he stepped out in the silent area with its warm and somewhat stale air. It smelled faintly of dust, disinfections, after-shave and roses and beneath that there was a reek of something sickening, however Brenning couldn't figure out what it was.

In front of him a set of double doors were open into a room laid in semi-dusk and from that space did he hear music, a piano sonata of the classic kind. But since Brenning had always been a rock-guy, he wasn't able to recognize any classic pieces beyond the fifth of Beethoven. Strange, he thought. Then he braced himself, he was here to do a scope after all. Perhaps the aliens did like classic music and fresh cut roses.

"Here goes nothing," he whispered to himself before he walked across the foyer and passed through the open doors and entered a large and spacious room, obviously two stores high, since he noted a landing halfway up with doors leading to other spaces, and a spiraling staircase on his left hand was circling up to the landing. When he stepped inside he understood by the sound of it that the music was not coming from someone playing live, but a surround system of some kind.

It was a living room kind of area, he figured, with a large space in the middle and a few small sitting lounges mingled with cupboards with antique items inside. In one corner there were a cello and a white grand piano and in another was an old style arcade console - pinball. A bit off on Brenning's left hand was a bar desk with four high chairs and bottles on racks behind. Book shelves lined the walls, filled with books, records – both CD's and LP's, movies and other items while the empty spots were covered with magnificent and obviously expensive art works. On the farthest wall was a huge plasma screen mounted, that one being the derivation for the music in the surround system. It was showing some kind of subtitled movie, with a couple on a sail yacht somewhere conversing sparsely in a foreign language, one or two words now and then, making the music the dominating sound.

Someone was watching that film.

Someone who took his eyes from the screen as Brenning entered the room, and stood from his seat. A man about Brenning's own age, perhaps three or four years younger, with a slightly receding blond smock of hair over an elongated, aristocratic face with steely gray eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses, a hawky nose and thin colourless lips modelled into what appeared to be an eternal smirk.

The stranger was pale in complexion, very pale and without any freckles, and he was dressed in dark-brown slackers and a creamy-white shirt sans necktie and with two buttons opened in the neck. He was tall and slender but with a slight but notable belly.

"Welcome, Mr... Brenning isn't it? Cliwe Brenning?" he stated as he came walking towards the reporter.  
"What, you..." Brenning heard himself say, and had to admit he sounded like an idiot.  
"Yes, you've been expected. And anticipated." The man held out his hands towards Brenning.  
"And who..."  
"...may you have the honor of speaking with," the pale stranger's lips were pulled a bit at the corners, indicating a smile rather than finalizing it. Well, my name is Noah Chandler, but you may simply refer to me as the Roswell Mystery.

"What? You?"  
"Yes, I am the one they have been hiding here for all those years."  
"But," Brenning staggered. "You don't look like a day over 32."  
"Well, Cliwe, I may call you Cliwe, right?" without waiting for an answer, Chandler went on. "You have probably heard it before that looks can be deceiving. That's a part of the syndrome I suffer from. However I'm not considering myself especially suffering, it can be lonely from time to time; then again, I was always something of a recluse even before I got ill back in the thirties, so I don't ache that much from it."

"Syndrome," Brenning echoed, hearing how stupid he kept on sounding. What happened to the smooth and clever reporter he held himself for? "What kind of syndrome, are you ill or something, Mr. Chandler?"

"Yes one might say I am. Another name I go by is Patient Zero. The first one infected. And the military people out there are praying that there'll be no more infected. No more of my kind. You might say I don't look that bad off, and I do feel fine, although a bit bored at times. Being almost a hundred years and having been inside of these rooms for 78 of those years isn't really that much fun. Still they fear mostly for themselves."

"I'm sorry, I don't follow." Brenning furrowed his brows. "You mean you are immortal?"  
"I think so, the cellular samples I hand over still show no signs of aging beyond the 34 I was when I became infected. But that doesn't mean I might get older given time, that my aging hasn't stopped completely but merely slowed down."  
"But is that so bad?"  
"Yes it is, Cliwe. For those outside it is."  
"So they keep you confined in here?"  
"Exactly." Chandler fanned out with his arms, and now there was an odd, almost scary twinkle in his gray eyes.

At this moment Brenning realized that the other man had come to stand so very close to him that he was matter of factly invading his personal sphere and unconsciously, Brenning took a step back. He also discovered that the nauseating smell was coming from Chandler himself. He smelled something like – hospitals. Or butcheries. A salty, oily, metallic tang. Blood. Now what?

"But how could I get in then?" he asked, the confusion colouring his voice. "Or did I... become LET IN."  
"Exactly," Chandlers grin turned even wider as he took one step forward, placing a cold hand on Brenning shoulder.  
"But... why?"  
"Because I need to eat, of course. And stored blood gets boring after a while. I need to bite someone sometimes."

With those words the vampire placed another hand on Brenning's other shoulder and leaned in, baring his fangs and before Brenning knew it, he had bitten into his neck, and with delight he begun sampling of the blood of the unfortunate reporter.

With a sigh Dr. Alison Sinclair switched off the surveillance camera. Mr. Chandler was an interesting object to study, the way his body was not aging, the way it was over-sensitive towards ultraviolet light and the way it could find adequate sustenance solely by human blood. As a doctor of medics the man was enchanting her, but she found his eating habits repulsive, especially when they now and then sacrificed a living human to him instead of giving him donor's blood. Usually those given to Chandler were people who got more or less unhealthily suspicious.

Back in 1938 Noah Chandler had been one of many volunteering test subjects upon which they had tested various kinds of biohazards and antidotes. Chandler had received a rare poison from a these days extinct bat found in Romania. Chandler and another young man had received the poison, the other poor sod had died before the antidote was brought in – and Chandler had turned vampire. Apparently it took a certain genetic composition to create a vampire, most people bitten by those bats simply died, however a few turned into vampires. If those were fortunate or not was more than Sinclair dared to say, however Chandler had become isolated at Area 51 while they were researching him and searching for a possible antidote.

So far Chandler was the only known vampire in the world, and the well-kept secret of this base. Not even the president knew that he existed, and Sinclair and a few others had sworn to protect this ultimate secret, since the fact that vampirism was real would cause a raging panic. Sinclair got to stay where he was; in return he got all commodities he asked for, even an ill-fated human now and then. And meanwhile the stupid people out there could believe in their aliens.


End file.
